Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. — Ephesians 5:25-28

Does your husband love you and take good care of you? Does he tell you when you’re doing a good job and when you could do better? Does he provide for you and keep you safe? That’s spiritual leadership.

Spiritual leadership isn’t just reading the Bible or doing devotions together as a family. It’s setting a good example of Christian life, and encouraging and leading his family to do the same.

3. Recognise His Current Efforts as a Spiritual Leader

Okay, so since spiritual leadership encompasses SO much more than just reading the Bible or praying, chances are your husband is already taking steps to lead your family — you just may not have recognised or fully appreciated them.

Personally, once I began to understand spiritual leadership in the sense of “modelling what good Christian living looks like and trying to encourage the rest of the family to live that way too’ instead of JUST doing family devotions or praying together, it completely opened up my eyes to all the many, many, many ways my own husband leads our family — ways I was completely oblivious too until I intentionally went looking for them!

For example, does your husband:

Model unconditional love and forgiveness

Go out of his way to love and serve others

Take your family outdoors to enjoy God’s creation

Cultivate intentional friendships with others

Weigh options and make smart decisions for your family

Encourage you to grow in faith

Seek to grow in faith himself

Sure, I may be the one who reads more Christian books in our family, but my husband is the one who has taught me so much about God’s love for me… about tenacity, contentedness, bravery and faith… about giving and helping and what it means to be a true friend… He encourages me when I’m right and challenges me when I’m wrong.

He may not sit down with me and lead me through the Bible, but he absolutely leads me to the Lord.

How does your husband seek to grow in faith (even if it’s quietly on his own) and encourage your family to do the same? If so, he’s probably more of a spiritual leader than you realise.

4. Share Your Hopes With Your Husband!

Okay, all that aside… if you have acknowledged your husband’s current leadership and you’d still like more, that’s totally fine. But in order to get it — you have to tell him what you want!

Your husband is not a mind-reader, and it’s not fair to expect him to be. Instead, you need to tell him what you’d like politely, specifically and in a positive matter, while being open to the fact that he may say no.

In other words, do NOT say:

I wish you were more of a spiritual leader in our family.

Why don’t you ever step up?

So-and-so’s family does this… why don’t we?

Instead say:

I would love it if our family could [do this particular thing]… What would you think about it?

Would you be interested in / willing to…?

I’m not sure what the best decision is in this situation… What do you think?

If he says no — that’s okay. He’s a grown-up and he’s allowed to do what he wants. If you’re trying to force your husband to lead you your way — that’s not leadership at all. That’s you telling him what to do, as though he were a child. Don’t do that.

But maybe he’d be happy to step into more of a leadership role — he just doesn’t know that you want him to or what you want him to do!

You never know unless you ask.

5. Identify and Remove Obstacles to Spiritual Leadership

If your husband does say no (or if he says yes, but doesn’t follow through), see if you can identify any obstacles that may be standing in the way.

For example:

He’s too tired after work

The kids are too loud / won’t sit still

He doesn’t have enough time

He doesn’t know how

He isn’t comfortable with that particular task

Once you know what the obstacle is, you can look for ways to solve it. For example, by:

Having the house clean and dinner ready so it’s not so chaotic in the evenings

Finding the right materials and having them on hand.

Furthermore, sometimes we – as Christian wives – can be an incredible obstacle to our husband’s spiritual leadership.

This happens when we refuse to follow his direction, undermine his authority, nag him to change, or insist on doing things our own way.

After all — how difficult must it be for our husbands to lead when we refuse to follow or when we constantly criticise their leadership? (Whether we mean to or not) And the tricky part is — we often do so without even realising it.

If you suspect this ‘may’ be an issue in your marriage (and even if you don’t), it’s definitely worth it to check in with your husband to see if there are any things you’ve been doing – even with the best of intentions – that are coming across as disrespectful to him or undermining his leadership for your family.

I know I’ve been guilty of this on more than one occasion! (Okay, lots of occasions…)

6. Acknowledge and Encourage His Leadership Often

Even if your conversation with your husband goes incredibly well, chances are that leadership is still a position that he will have to grow into over a period of time. There will be a learning curve as he learns to step up and develops the confidence to do so, while you learn to step down and develop the trust to do so.

During this time, while the ‘rules’ of your relationship are changing, you both may feel a little insecure, uneasy or unsettled. Hopefully you both want to do the right thing for your family, but you’re likely still figuring out what that is and where the boundary lines are.

You’ll both mess up plenty of times along the way — you’ll learn some things by trial and error — and that’s okay too. Neither one of you will get it right the first time, and honestly, it’s okay if it gets a little worse before it gets better. You’ll get there.

In the meantime, look for as MANY chances as you can find to verbally acknowledge and appreciate all the things he is doing.

Tell him how much you enjoy the new things he is trying, and do your best not to correct him when things go wrong. Tell him you’re proud of him, and share how excited you are for the new dynamic. Find things to praise him for and look for situations where you can step down and defer to his leadership.

(Not in a patronising way, of course, but in an encouraging, supportive way.)